Memories of Menlo: Back in '36, ranchers blocked Willow Road traffic

By Dick Barbour

There was a pretty fair-sized hassle over there on Willow Road, and it was in all the papers, 45 years ago this week (1936). It stemmed from the right to use Willow Road from the newly completed Dumbarton Bridge to Bay Road, which in turn connected with county and state roadways of the time. This was, of course, well before the Bayshore Freeway became a factor.

Two of the more prominent ranchers and respected landowners in the productive Ravenswood lands near the Bay were W. A. Canduff and Moses Kavanaugh, whose homes were on Willow Road. They contended that the thoroughfare was, as it had always been, on their property.

On the first day of July 1925, Carduff decided that it was time to manifest his proprietary interest and he did so in a most dramatic and effective way. He simply built a fence across the road and blocked traffic. After a time the fence was removed but Carduff and Kavanaugh were not about to abandon their cause.

On July 28 of the following year, they parked an automobile across the road in such a way as to again block the flow of traffic. Shortly after that obstacle to vehicular passage was in place, along came Ira Duy, also a rancher in the Ravenswood area. Ira attempted to move the road-blocking automobile but was restrained with threats of bodily injury, according to the subsequent lawsuit.

On August 21, 1926, District Attorney Franklin Swart filed a petition in the Superior Court at Redwood City asking the court to enjoin Carduff and Kavanaugh from blocking the road. The complaint named both of the ranchers and their wives as defendants. The petition alleged that the roadway had been open to, and used by, the public for 40 years, but had only recently been declared a county highway by the Board of Supervisors.

Kavanaugh and Carduff, on the other hand, declared that despite the public's use of Willow Road, they had never at any time ceded the road to the county and steadfastly maintained their equity in the thoroughfare.

It can be assumed that the litigation went against the ranchers, because a short time after the petition was filed the matter was settled, and Supervisor John McBain announced that $25,000 had been earmarked to improve the thoroughfare.

So it can be reported that something of the spirit of the old west prevailed in our town until as late as 45 years ago when a couple of doughty ranchers were not about to relinquish what they perceived as their property rights to the bureaucrats over at the county seat. But, on Willow Road today, at the height of the daily commute traffic, no parked cars nor fences across the road are needed to stall traffic on this heavily traveled two-lane roadway.

Supervisor McBain where are you?